MIKE NADEL: Cubs must address woes at Wrigley

Wrigley Field should be one of the great home-field advantages in baseball. I'm in my 13th season covering the Cubs and I still haven't figured out why it's not.

Mike Nadel

Wrigley Field should be one of the great home-field advantages in baseball. I'm in my 13th season covering the Cubs and I still haven't figured out why it's not.Too many day games? Hello! After 112 years of playing only in the afternoon and another 20 of mostly doing so, shouldn't the Cubs be used to it by now? Shouldn't opponents have to adjust more than the Cubs do?

The grass is too high? The fans sit too close to the field? The brick wall is too intimidating? Too many nooks and crannies? Too windy? Too cold in April? Too hot in August? Too many tempting taverns in Wrigleyville? Too many curses?

When managers, coaches or players cite any of those as excuses - as since-departed Todd Walker did last season; good riddance, loser! - it makes me ill. Everything in the preceding paragraph (except for the curses, of course) should be a major advantage for the home team.

When the Cubs return to Wrigley today after a 4-1 road trip, the stands will be packed with Cubbie-blue-clad loyalists cheering their heroes. Even though the natives get restless (and occasionally nasty) when things go bad, most jump at the first chance to turn boos back into cheers. There's no more vocal, forgiving fanbase in sports.

Even with all that going for the Cubs, however, Chicago all too often hasn't been sweet home.

They were 4-9 at Wrigley Field in April. That after having losing home records in five of the previous eight years, including 2005 and 2006. In '04, the Cubs were playoff bound until they imploded, losing five consecutive home games in the final week. In '03, the Cubs needed to win just one of two NL Championship Series games at Wrigley to reach the World Series; naturally, they lost both in historically horrific fashion.

How is such a high level of home incompetence even possible? One theory: The Cubs subconsciously give in to the myths involving day games, the legendary jinxes and other silliness. As ridiculous as that sounds, I have no better theory - and neither do the Cubs.

"I wish I had the answer," Derrek Lee said last week before the final game of a 2-4 homestand. "We talk about this every year. It should be an advantage ... but for some reason, it doesn't seem to be.

"Obviously, we'd like to play better at home. We need to play better at home. We need to play winning baseball. We've got to figure out a way to do that."

The Cubs seemed to figure out something during their just-completed trip. As has been the case most of the year, they received outstanding starting pitching. And in the last two games at Pittsburgh, the hitters delivered in the clutch; Alfonso Soriano, who had done nothing in April to justify his $136 million contract, homered and had three hits in each game.

So although the Cubs still aren't a .500 team, have yet to win a one-run game and remain well behind upstart Milwaukee in the lousy NL Central, it's not wait-till-next-year-time in Cubbieland just yet.

The homestand that begins today includes three games each against woeful Washington and putrid Pittsburgh. The Cubs need to fix their problems and/or exorcise their Wrigley ghosts, because the stand is followed by a brutal 17-day stretch featuring 13 road games (Phillies, Mets, Padres, Dodgers) and a home series against the White Sox.

"If you looked at our schedule, you saw all those home games in April and you got your expectations up," Michael Barrett said. "So it was a bit of a letdown to lose most of those games. Still, I honestly feel it's just a matter of time. We'll win a lot of games, and we'll win a lot here."

Even if they don't, the Cubs and their fans can pretend.

During the last homestand, a Peoria-area reader named Lee Reed sent me old-fashioned snail mail. I couldn't respond to him personally because he included neither a return address nor a working telephone number. Anyway, between all the names he called me (most unsuitable for print), he asked this question: "How come you only write about the Cubs after a loss?"

Well, could it be that I cover mostly home games and the Cubs hadn't won any of those I had attended? (For the record, they're 0-2 in road games I've covered this season, too.) Talk about shooting the messenger.

I'll be fairly busy in the coming weeks with the Bulls - a genuine contender, not to mention an organization that has won championships since William Howard Taft succeeded Teddy Roosevelt in the White House. But when I do return to the Crumbling Confines and witness Cubbie losses, I simply will pretend they won.